The Best Hosted Shopping Cart Apps for Your Site

There’s many ways to sell stuff online, but if you’ve decided you want to sell stuff directly from your own site, you’ve still got to figure out how exactly to do that. You could run a dedicated eCommerce platform on your site, or perhaps add it with a plugin like WooCommerce. The simplest way, though, is with a hosted shopping cart service.

In this roundup I’m going to look at three of the best hosted shopping carts available: eJunkie, AmberCart and Cashie Commerce. Each one has its own pro’s and con’s, and hopefully though this article you’ll be able to find the one that is right for you. Let’s dig in.

For the three shopping carts I’m going to talk about how easy to set up they are, the pricing ,and some awesome features I feel are worth mentioning. Hopefully, this will help you to see which one is for you!

The first app we’ll be looking at today is eJunkie, a shopping cart which has been received very well across the web because of its simplicity and capability. The apps purpose is to allow you to sell downloads and tangible goods on your webpage. You do have options to sell on eBay, Myspace, Google Checkout and Craigslist through the app.

Setting up is even simpler than may think. After registering you have to fill in details such as email, password and where your money will be sent to. You have a range of options here including Paypal.

Setting up eJunkie.

Now, you’ll access to the admin panel. Here you can add products which you want to sell. After adding your goods you’ll be given a code which will, once placed on your webpage, add a buy now button for that specific product — and you’re done. It couldn’t be any easier.

The pricing of eJunkie varies depending on how many products and how much storage space you require. These range from 10 products and 50MB of space for $5/month all the way to $265/month for 7999 products and 7999 MB of space. Also on plans of over $18/month you are allowed to store download files on your own server.

A typical eJunkie button.

In my opinion, for the service you are receiving these are reasonable price bands. You’re not paying way too much per month, and should definitely make the investment back if you’re selling regularly. The app also has no transaction limits, no setup fee, and no transaction fee.

All in all, eJunkie is a great shopping cart which will let you easily sell downloads and tangible goods. It has some nice extra features and isn’t overpriced.

Amber Cart looks high quality and sleek at first glance, with an opening screen which is well designed and inviting. The good thing is, it sticks to this high standard throughout the app.

Once you’ve signed up you’re taken to an admin dashboard display. Here you can track your orders and see what has been shipped or not. You can also add products by filling in a few options. Adding products is something I was really impressed by, as the app will ask you to fill in some quick details and you’ll be done — nothing confusing at all.

Adding products in the AmberCart dashboard.

Once you’ve sorted out the settings and payment method, available again with Paypal, you’ll be given a code which will add the button to your web page. This short video shows how quickly you can add AmberCart to WordPress.

Adjusting and gaining the code for button in AmberCart.

Unlike eJunkie, AmberCart works out pricing by your sales volume. This ranges from a free tier if you’re making $0-$50/month up to $39/month for $5000 to $20,000 sales per/month. As you can see once again, this is a very reasonable price for the kind of money you could be making.

Pricing bands for the app.

Overall, another well equipped shopping cart which is easy to use and doesn’t cost the world.

The final shopping cart I’ll be looking at today is Cashie Commerce. Out of the three this one definitely has the most customisable options, being able to edit and change nearly everything imaginable. The whole process is again easy to follow with helpful buttons and tips scattered around the interface.

Being able to change settings such as font and currency are always helpful — this app is loaded with extra apps like this. While the other two apps were quite basic this seems much detailed in comparison. Some of these include making tax rules for different regions and making Facebook stores, too.

Following the simple tips for adding buttons in Cashie.

Once you’ve set up all your products, instead of one code like normal, you are given six different ones which will all send your customers to different places. This gives you a bit of variety in the type of process your buyer will go through. Cashie also offers an easy way to view your orders and billing information.

Cashie offers many options for adjusting the appearance.

The pricing again differs from the other two. Here you will be charged by Cashie 2.5% for transaction fee + Paypal charges for payment processing. This will be 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. This may result in paying more than AmberCart and eJunkie.

In conclusion, Cashie is the most detailed of the three and will give the most options to customise, although this comes at a price. Even though this is pretty reasonable, the price may work much higher than some of the other hosted shopping carts.

Final Thoughts

Hosted shopping carts are some of the simplest things to set up and could be the most profitable change to your website. As you’ve seen these aren’t the most expensive services in the world — and won’t be burning a massive hole in your pocket.

Do you use hosted shopping carts? Which would you choose? Let us know below!

Anything for Blogspot owners or a custom script? Thanks, at least I have an option in WordPress.

http://techinch.com/ Matthew Guay

Nothing I know of right off; sorry! Also, WooCommerce requires a self-hosted WordPress install. That said, WooCommerce does work good, and is easy to manage. My dad uses it to sell WordPress plugins, and it’s worked great for him (though he’s just using PayPal payments).

Nice roundup, now we know what to use in case we decide to have an e-commerce site..

Spence

This is a list of the worst hosted shopping carts! eJunkie is OK for digital (but there are better) and the other two are rubbish! No mention at all of the market leaders here like Shopify or Big Cartel, think the writers here need to do a bit more research!

sridevi kannan

Hi, ZS Cart is the best hosted ecommerce shopping cart software solution & you can create your store in just minutes.http://www.zscart.com